Word.ws English Dictionary

cut both ways

cut both ways verb: to have both benefits and drawbacks.

Verb

cut both ways (third-person singular simple present cuts both ways, present participle cutting both ways, simple past and past participle cut both ways)

  1. (idiomatic) To have both benefits and drawbacks.
    • A redundant observation about Ben Fouhy: It's not easy being him. "No, not really. But that cuts both ways you know, that affords me the opportunities, the highs and lows, the heights and depths that perhaps other people don't ... experience."March 10 2012, New Zealand Herald, Michele Hewitson interview: Ben Fouhyhttps://web.archive.org/web/20131016033007/http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10791043
  2. (idiomatic) To have implications for something as well as its counterpart.
    • Readers are invited at this point to listen to the pleasant sound of the recordings in LT [Lehman’s temperament], which can be found on this page. Together with the record value of MSS [Music Sameness of Scales], this makes a convincing case for Lehman’s hypothesis. But arguments, like a razor,(5)...2009 June, Emmanuel Amiot, “Discrete Fourier Transform and Bach’s Good Temperament”, in Music Theory Online, volume 15, number 2, →DOI
    • And the findings could cut both ways. / "It's certainly possible that an intruder was responsible for the murder, but I don't think that the DNA evidence proves it," said William C. Thompson […] Similarly, the findings don't implicate or exonerate anyone in the family.2016 October 27, Charlie Brennan, Kevin Vaughan, “DNA in doubt: New analysis challenges DA's exoneration of Ramseys”, in Loveland Reporter Herald, archived from the original on 29 Oct 2016
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cut, both, ways.

Forms of cut both ways

third-person singular presentcuts both ways
present participlecutting both ways
past participlecut both ways
pastcut both ways

Questions about cut both ways

What does cut both ways mean?
Cut both ways means to have both benefits and drawbacks.
What part of speech is cut both ways?
Cut both ways is a verb.
What is the past tense of cut both ways?
The past tense of cut both ways is cut both ways.

Words near cut both ways in the dictionary

  1. cut away one's soul
  2. cut back
  3. cut bait
  4. Cut Bank
  5. cut below
  6. cut both ways
  7. cut buddies
  8. cut buddy
  9. cut cake
  10. cut cakes
  11. cut capers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cut both ways (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cut both ways.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cut both ways.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cut_both_ways. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.